In recent years, portable devices have become increasingly popular. More and more of these devices make use of displays. Significant efforts have been devoted to increasing the overall quality of images generated by these displays while decreasing the overall size of the device. One approach makes use of liquid crystals to generate an image.
Liquid crystal displays frequently make use of a liquid crystal material located between two opposing plates. The liquid crystal selectively transmits or blocks light incident thereon depending on the orientation of the liquid crystal molecules. The orientation of liquid crystal molecules may be controlled by selectively applying an electrical field to a given location of the liquid crystal across the two plates. By controlling the orientation of the liquid crystal across the entire display, light directed thereto may be selectively transmitted or blocked to thereby form an image.
One concern present in many devices is battery life. Thus, efforts have been directed to reducing the power consumption of portable devices in order to decrease the power consumption and thus increase the battery lifetime, which may ultimately affect the portability of such a device. One type of liquid crystal display makes use of a configuration that has a single stable state in the absence of an electric field. Thus, in order to continuously generate an image, the liquid crystal orientation is frequently refreshed. Frequent refreshing of the electric field applied to the liquid crystal consumes power. The general aim of current research is to reduce the power applied to the LCD. Many different areas of research have sprung up to tackle these problems and several devices have been created with varying degrees of effectiveness and success. One type of device, which can give significant reduction in power consumption, is the bi-stable display.
Many polymer materials have been used as adhesives in various industries. However, such adhesives may not function well if applied when the surfaces are wet with water or other liquids. One particularly demanding situation is in the cell assembly of flexible displays. For large-area displays, “adhesive dots” are needed in the middle portion of the display to maintain cell gap. As these adhesive dots are in the middle of the display, they need to be as small as possible to minimize dead area and defects; their area needs to be consistent and uniform throughout the display. In the case of liquid crystal displays, including bi-stable displays, the adhesive in the adhesive dots should not leach out in the presence of or be attacked by liquid crystals. Additionally, it may be desirable to form the bond in the presence of liquid crystals.